As energy costs have risen, some commercial, industrial and municipal customers are removing existing older lighting fixtures (e.g., high intensity discharge (HID) and/or older T12 fluorescent lighting fixtures) and replacing them with newer, more energy efficient lighting fixtures. These more energy efficient lighting fixtures can be based on multiple lamp types including high intensity linear fluorescent (HIF), screw-in compact fluorescent (CFL), pin mounted photoluminescence fluorescent (PL), induction lamps (IL), and/or light emitting diodes (LED).
While the cost of installing entirely new fixtures using such energy efficient lamps can be returned over time based on the energy savings, the process can be time consuming, includes the purchase of a completely new fixture and hence delivers a proportionally lower economic return. In addition, newer highly efficient IL and LED based fixtures have extremely high initial capital costs.
Retrofitting an existing HID fixture using a screw-in CFL style lamp(s) without a light reflector has been performed, but the light output performance associated with the screw-in CFL type of lamp has delivered poor performance versus the pre-existing HID style lamps.
Retrofitting an existing HID fixture with a higher performance PL lamp and ballast without a light reflector has been performed, but the light output performance associated with this retrofit has delivered poor performance versus the pre-existing HID style lamps.
Retrofitting an existing HID fixture with PL lamp(s) and an optically efficient light reflector optimized for the PL lamp and a backing plate designed for easy mounting enables the best balance of sufficient light output with high energy savings and a low total cost of installation.